Portable or mobile devices originally introduced as mobile phones or electronic agendas become more and more ubiquitous. As the processing power of their internal processors grows and equally the bandwidth for communication with stationary processors, such portable devices take on more and more the role of multi-purpose tools available to consumers and specialist users alike.
It has been recognized that portable devices can benefit from the presence of sensors capable of providing chemical analysis of materials brought into contact or the vicinity of the device. Whilst there are many possible applications for such sensors, it suffices to consider for example the analysis of air surrounding the portable device. Such an analysis can be useful for multiple purposes such as testing for hazardous gases, breath analysis for general medical purposes or driving fitness, and the like.
It has been known to incorporate gas sensors into portable sensor devices, such as mobile phones or tablet computers. For example, humidity sensors have been incorporated into some smartphone devices. However, humidity (i.e. gaseous water in air) is only one gas that might be of interest to a user of this type of device. Therefore, there is a need to provide devices that allow to measure a larger selection of gases, such as alcohol, CO, benzene, or groups of gases, which can e.g. be classified as certain smells or odors.
Even though there are various sensor types, in particular metal-oxide gas sensors, that allow detection of such gases or groups of gases these sensors are typically not very selective and are more or less sensitive to whole classes of gases. In order to distinguish between certain gases or groups of gases, a plurality of sensors may have to be combined and/or a sensor must be operated in a certain fashion, e.g. using a certain temperature profile. In addition, the results of a measurement are typically processed using predefined routines and methods, which are specific to the sensor and the type of gas or gases to be measured.
General purpose portable device are known to be operated using an operation system (OS). To expand the versatility of such devices, it is further known to provide a mechanism for running third party software applications on these devices. For this purpose, the devices are provided with an application programming interface (API), which provides calls or handlers for the exchange of data with the device's OS in a standardized manner. An example of an API for a gas sensor is the Environment Sensors API of the Android operating system. In particular, this API supports humidity sensors, which measure the humidity of the ambient air.
However both the performance of an individual sensor integrated into the portable device as well as the routines to operate it and to evaluate the measurement can be subject to change. These changes can be for example a deterioration of the sensor performance or improvements in the methods used to evaluate the results.
In view of the above problems it is seen as an object of the invention to provide a portable electronic device with an adaptable chemical sensor system located within its housing and related methods for providing an adaptable control of the chemical sensor.